Tuesday

The last time we had any rain, it was a downpour the morning of Sept 14 and the next day white mushrooms started popping up all over my front yard.

They were impossible to miss- super white against the green grass. They are Coprinus comatus, aka Shaggy Mane, aka Inky Cap, aka Shaggy Ink Cap, aka Lawyer's Wig. The "ink" in the common name comes from how they deteriorate:

From the bottom of the cap up, they wilt away as dripping black goo. Mmmm mmm, this is NOT "good eating" stage.

When they are first up and the caps are still slightly closed and there's no grey discoloration to the caps, they are good to pick and eat cooked. I feel like I should put some cautionary text here: you should never pick and eat any wild mushrooms, ever. The same way that Food Network says you should never eat beef carpaccio because raw beef is a one-way ticket to the emergency room. Better safe than legally liable.

I feel comfortable with shaggy manes. I first saw them along the driveway last year and COOKED and ate some. And even then, I only ate a little at a time to see how I would react. I also had no alcohol during and 48 hours after eating these; these particular mushroom can cause some gastrointestinal distress in some people when consumed with alcohol.

Most importantly, there aren't any deadly look-alikes. I recently saw some of what I *think* are honey mushrooms in the woods but I'm not going to play with them because I don't feel comfortable positively identifying them and there ARE deadly mushrooms that look similar. They say there are old mushroom hunters, there are bold mushroom hunters... but there aren't any old and bold mushroom hunters, if you catch my drift. ... Because they're dead. ... From eating poisonous mushrooms.

I picked quite a few tightly closed mushrooms:

Because of their tendency to not stay nice very long after picking, I had them cleaned and cut up within an hour. Into a pan with some local butter:

Cooked down:

I decided on a lazy, I mean rustic mushroom tart. Usually when I make a pie or quiche and there are leftover dough scraps, I'll pile them up, roll or pat into a thick patty, wrap in saran wrap and throw it into the fridge for a simple, small galette some days down the line.

Also, this means the mushrooms will be cooked twice. Once in the pan with butter and again in the oven in the tart. I would never, never, ever, never eat any mushroom I foraged for raw. Raw mushrooms will usually cause more gastro distress. Plus, cooking helps make them more palatable.

So I roll out some dough on parchment paper, layer some panko breadcrumbs (to absorb moisture and keep the bottom of the tart from getting soggy) and parm cheese. Then layer on the mushrooms. I topped with some grated semi-soft half cow/half goat milk cheese. Sprinkled some seasoning and flopped over the edges:

Baked at 350 F for 35 min. Topped with scallions.

This was amazing. Would be just as good with any mushrooms you can get at the grocery store- button, crimini, oyster. If you have access to more exotic ones like maitake or beech or king trumpet- those would be nice. A mix of any of those. I think mushrooms, cheese and pastry dough are a one way ticket to contentment.

Because it was a small amount of dough, this tart is probably only about 8" in diameter. Still, I only ate a small wedge so as not to consume too many wild mushrooms at once.

Monday

It's been nearly two weeks since I've posted. Things have been crrraaazzzy busy. First, getting things done and in order for the fair. I finished the baby blanket and had just enough time to block and dry:

I beyond love it. It was really a labor of love- the charts were immense, every single row was different and I had to keep track at all time of what I was doing and how things lined up. This was definitely not an auto-pilot project. The stitches on the dragon's body are different from the chest which are different from the wings which are different from the spikes, etc. The pattern makes great use of many textures. I've shown it to my sister but I'll be saving it until Christmas.

At the fair, the blanket received a 2nd place ribbon- the bottom seed-stitch border is a little narrower than the rest. Fine- you know, that IS true. You kind of have to have an eagle eye to see it but these judges are being judgey and they know what they're looking for. What DID hurt my feelings is that the blanket was folded and hung on a wire, hiding 80% of the pattern. I would have liked to see the blanket displayed so that the entire dragon could be seen- I think spectators would have liked that and it would have merited a few oohs and aahs. But display space is limited. ... But it still hurt my feelings.

I didn't get to taste it, other than the batter pre-baked and the extra top (which became the bottom)- when I cut away some scraps to level it off. I later dried out the scraps and ground them up to have with an apple tart:

This is just a pie crust in a shallow tart pan with some cinnamon sugar apple slices arranged in a pretty pattern. Served with the ground up chai cake crumbs and vanilla ice cream.

A friend came to stay with me over the weekend for the fair- there were plenty of visits to the beer hall, some rides, lots of fair food, viewing the livestock cavalcade from the grandstand, visiting all the animals in the barns. We picked up all my entries Sunday night:

I've entered more stuff in the past but this year I started a new job and was super busy from Feb - June, which is primo knitting time. I'll still be just as busy next year during those months but hopefully I can manage time better.

Will be returning to the fairgrounds this weekend for the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival. Can't wait to see all the pretty things!

Tuesday

Busy weekend. We attended a wedding Friday night. Then I made a trip to Hmart with my mom on Saturday. Sunday Dollar and I attended the 5th annual Mac and Cheese Challenge in Windsor and then booked it down to Claremont to catch IT at the theater (yes, so scary, so good).

Last Thursday was the NFL regular season opener at Gillette. I made a pizza for the game:

After baking:

This actually wasn't that hard to do and I might try making more pictures/designs on pizza with vegetables. I'm not going to use pepperoni anymore, though. We usually just have onion and peppers on our pizza and after not having pepperoni for such a long time, I was put off by all the grease. Maybe turkey pepperoni would be okay.

Trying to finish up the dragon baby blanket. To drop off at the Fair. Tomorrow.

Thursday

Busy at work- prepping for Hurricane Irma. I probably won't have to go back down to DC next week and will be able to support from home. Which is good- I'm going to Hmart with my mom on Sat, Dollar and I are going to the VT Mac and Cheese Challenge at the Harpoon Brewery on Sunday. I'm taking next Thurs/Fri off for the Fair.

Tonight is the first regular season Pats game! So excite! Pizza is on the menu at home but I don't know if I should put a Patriots logo on it... or a certain clown face. Hm...

Tuesday

It didn't seem to do much damage to the flowers- just affecting a bit of coleus behind the house.

I was in DC last week, doing mapping work in support of Hurricane Harvey. It was crrrraaazy busy: work from 6 am to 10 pm, go to the hotel, sleep, wake up and do it again. I got home Friday evening and crashed. I had a bit of work to do remotely over the weekend (Sat-Mon) but it didn't take up more than a couple hours each morning.

Was so nice to return home to sleep and chill and cook homemade food. Since the weather is dropping, I've been craving chowders and stews. Kimchi jjigae is going to be a weekly dish, I think:

The rest of the weekend I put together a couple new shelving units and started organizing my craft room (which was such an embarrassing mess). I think I'm going to have a lot of stuff to get rid of and bring to the dump.

My pre-reg form was sent to the Tunbridge Fair (mailed from DC) and I've got to start gathering (and MAKING?) some of the stuff that I said I would enter. Gulp. The baby blanket is progressing but it's slow going.

Friday

I don't think I've posted any garden flowers since the height of daylilies. There are still a few blooming, here and there. It's so sad to see the very last bloom and think that it won't appear again until next year:

I was able to enjoy a few, small pink coneflowers, despite the woodchucks best attempts to eat it all into oblivion:

Hydrangeas bloomed this year:

I really don't get much, if any, blossoms from my hydrangea bushes. I don't cut back the old growth, I try fertilizing and adding hydrangea food. Nothing has ever worked. But this year something was different and the blooms are pink- so I know my soil is alkaline.

The fragrant asiatics have come and gone:

If there's a nice breeze, I can smells these from 30 feet away. It's so nice. I wish they would spread faster, though.

I moved my butterfly bush this past spring and it did well enough to grow and bloom:

And that's a healthy catnip plant in the background- which was happy surprise when I found it growing right next to the deck stairs.

Obedient plant:

White gayfeather added this past spring:

The blanket flower is responding well to deadheading and should continue to bloom for quite a while:

And the last of some daylilies:

This one, Secret of Contentment, is my favorite and is a late-summer bloomer so there is still much more to come:

Summersweet shrubs are blooming in the back yard and are smelling like lilacs in the summertime:

And the glads (all both of them) are starting to bloom:

I thought that you had to dig up the blubs every year and store them for the winter and replant in the spring. Like, who has time for that? I left them in the beds over the first winter and pulled up all the dead stuff in the spring, thinking I would plant something else in that location. Lo, some glads came up late last summer and bloomed. So, I left them for another winter and they've bloomed again this year. There are lots of young, new shoots as well so I know there are many baby corms under the ground. I'm still going to leave everything where it is (#lazygardener) and see what happens next year.

Stonecrop should start blooming soon. Cardinal flower has started but they aren't the showiest specimens in the world. I've really got to get out and weed this weekend- bindweed and crab grass and a bunch of other junk have really swallowed up a few areas. I cut back my delphinium weeks ago to give new growth some light but things are really cooling off (nightly lows in the mid-40s now) and don't think I'll get another show.

This weekend, though, I really have to focus on Fair knitting and start rounding up all the things I'm going to enter. I have to mail the pre-reg form next week!

Thursday

After the last pie I made, I had a significant amount of dough scraps. I piled them up, pressed it all into a patty and wrapped it in saran wrap to keep in the fridge for a rustic tart later. I am overwhelmed with tomatoes from the CSA and decided a tomato galette would be an easy way to use a few:

I rolled out the dough, added a layer of panko breadcrumbs, topped with some cheddar, sliced onion, tomatoes, sprinkle of salt and a more generous sprinkle of Cavender's all purpose greek seasoning (my new favorite use-on-everything blend), folded up the edges and baked at 350 for 30 min.

By the way, the cheddar I used was Vermont Farmstead Governor's Cheddar. The American Cheese Society recently had their annual Judging and Competition and the winners were announced. Every year I make a list of the VT winners and go to the Hanover or Lebanon Coop looking for them. I can usually find quite a few. This Governor's Cheddar won 2nd place for Aged Cheddar 12 - 24 mos. Another winner from Vermont Farmstead that I bought and have already eaten (#sorrynotsorry) is Lille Coulommiers. 10/10, will definitely get again. Soft and spreadable and creamy. And this farm is so local- just in Woodstock, VT.

Wednesday

The two biggest green things in there I had just bought at a nursery- so they were doing well. All the other stuff- the hens and chicks and succulents- were picked off from here and there around the flower beds.

Here it is one month later on June 24:

July 5:

Aug 7:

Yesterday, Aug 22:

Everything filled in so well in this whiskey barrel with nice potting soil. I have an old washer tub in a flower bed that I put annuals in for the last couple years but I didn't deadhead the petunias at all this year and things are looking a little gross. I'll do the same succulent mini garden in the washer tub. Would love to find a winter-hardy succulent that drapes/hangs down... that would look nice growing out of the tub...

Tuesday

This past weekend was the 2nd annual Nanofest (festival of 4-barrel or smaller breweries), held at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds.

We arrived a little after 12pm and got some beer (of course) and food:

This was so good. I got ribs (they were perfect) and Dollar got a pulled pork sandwich. The beans had big chunks of pulled pork. The coleslaw was great.

There was live music and we ran into friends. I tried a bit of this and that:

The way it worked was that you bought drink tickets for $1 each and each ticket is a 3oz pour. If you want 6 oz of something- two tickets. A full glass is 12 oz, so four tickets. I ended up trying 3 to 6 oz of, like, everything.

Got home around 6:30, took a quick nap and woke up a little after 8 pm to watch the Pats/Texans preseason game. My stomach was... not awesome from the variety of beer I sampled all day. Sunday was devoted to my hangover. For lunch, I was able to pull together some ramen:

Just some spicy Shin Ramyun from a package with a whisked egg poured in to the boiling soup near the end of cook time. The scallions were already sliced in a container in the fridge from a meal earlier in the week. So this was a verrrrrry low effort meal but totally worked to cure my hangover (along with a gallon of water).

Monday

I've made it through 25% of the charts and just started the 2nd ball of yarn. The entire blanket is one picture of a dragon so progress is definitely line-by-line. I move my highlighter tape up the chart every two rows- thankfully the wrong side rows are mostly purl with only an occasional different stitch.

Friday

So we brought Rocky to the vet yesterday to be neutered after he bit Murderface. We dropped him off at 7:30 am and at 10 am I get a call. He can't be neutered. Because he is a girl.

We've had him, I mean HER, for two years. We were told she was a boy and assumed it to be so. I had no desire to double-check and wouldn't even know what to be looking for. So we brought her home, no surgery needed, and we've made the switch to start using female pronouns.

UPDATE: But get this- I contacted the previous owner, our friend who has since moved to Florida, and said, "Yo, Rocky's a girl." He wrote back and very definitively said that no, Rocky is male. Rocky was fixed at about 8-months-old. He has SEEN Rocky's male parts with his own eyes. 100% sure that Rocky is male.

I'm so confused. I guess we'll just... keep using "she" and "her"... Because I assume the vet has seen more rabbits than our friend... But then, what did he see that looked like male parts? I don't know. I don't know.

Thursday

Had dinner guest over this past weekend to celebrate a belated birthday (we missed the actual party while we were in Quebec last month). I wanted to make a summery pie with blueberries and since peaches are in season as well...

Blueberry peach pie it is. The pie also serves as a belated birthday card:

The text got a little bit harder to read after baking:

The pie was super with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

And since I had peaches on hand, it was peach sangria time:

This sangria is out-of-control tasty. A bottle of sauvignon blanc, a cup of Applejack brandy, half of cup of triple sec, half a bottle of Tropicana Peach Passion Fruit probiotic drink, juice of one lime, peach slices. Pour over ice and mix with plain seltzer. It's incredible. And as long as you keep the seltzer separate, you can keep the pitcher in the fridge and just pour off a fizzy peachy drink whenever.